Photos: Site of Benjamin Waugh birthplace, Inscription and Tour Bus taken May 2011

Benjamin Waugh - 20 February 1839 – 11 March 1908

The Reverend Benjamin Waugh was a Victorian social reformer and campaigner who founded the UK charity, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the late 19th century.

Waugh was born, the son of a clergyman, in Settle, North Yorkshire and attended theological college in Bradford before moving to Newbury, Berkshire and then in 1866 to London.

In 1884, he founded the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to children (echoing a similar initiative in Liverpool), launched at London's Mansion House on 8 July. The London body's first chairman was veteran social reformer Earl Shaftesbury. It evolved to become the NSPCC some five years later (14 May 1889), with Waugh as its first director and Queen Victoria as its first patron.